My Sunday Poem … # 13

My Sunday Poem … # 13

I wrote this week’s offering way back in the summer of 1969. I was all of 17 and quite heavily into Arthurian literature at the time. I’d been hitch-hiking in Devon and Cornwall with my pal Charlie Parker. One of the places we visited was the ruins of Tintagel Castle in Cornwall which had long been linked to the legend of King Arthur.

The Battle

sweet queens with flowing robes
touching marble floor
so little do they know
so little are they sure
if their knights return from battle
or if they are staying

young princes dance and play
on the courtyard stone
so little did they have to say
when their seed was sown
in the fields of sword and armour
reaped by death alone

a princess she lies sleeping
upon a silken bed
hear her softly weeping
as thoughts go round her head
of flowers trampled stained with blood
of the one she loves

court jester hides his tears
with visage of a happy man
appalling jokes betray his fears
there’s gloom across the land
as one by one the knights return
weeping for their clan

magician to the king
fate he is a stirring
with rabbit’s paw and bat’s wing
a little occult learning
the future holds so much lament
a trial is ahead

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